Tales of the Abysmal
by A human
Summary: The storyline of ToA gone just a liiitle offtrack. Tear's evil, Mieu is an aspiring actor, Ion's a little aggressive and Jade is Jade.
1. Chapter 1

Tales of the Abysmal

Prologue: ND 2000: In the kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear shall be born the scion of Lorelei's power. He will be of noble blood, with hair of red and terrible anger management issues. He will be called "the light of the sacred flashlight", and he shall lead the Lanvaldear Institute football team to three straight perfect seasons. He shall then be kidnapped by Mystearica Grants' older brother Vandesdelca, who will basically clone him and send the replica back. The replica will instantly know and understand his situation, but never tell anyone because he fears they will make him leave, and the house chef will hold the world record for best dang peanut butter & jelly sandwich you will ever taste in your life. Oh yeah, and Tear's gonna sink Hod. Oh, well. Oh, and Mr. Replica has finally mastered this hyperresonance thingy just before we get started, so he's pretty giddy with that still. Read the rest of the fic if you want more. It's my lunch break.

**Chapter 1**

Luke was crushingly bored. He had eaten his fill of the cook's sandwiches, practiced his swordplay till his servants would have no more of it, and gotten so desperate for something to do he was now using small hyperresonances to try listening to himself change his voice. Just as he reached a bass so low it shook the manor, a servant entered his room. "Master Luke, your parents want you to come to the drawing room and meet with Dorian General Van Grants, who has come to inform you that he'll be leaving to go look for some bozo named Ion, but he still has some time left now if you want to practice a little with him."

"Ummm, if you just told me exactly what's going to happen when I go there, wouldn't it save time if Master Van just came out to the courtyard and started teaching me?", Luke asked.

"Master Luke, you moron! You know we have to follow the plotline!" shouted the maid.

"Geez, okay already, I get it. Dismissed." As the maid left to go play Tales of the Abyss on the family's 60 ft. hi-definition TV, Luke wandered towards the door, but suddenly found himself on his knees and clutching his head, which felt as though it was going to split like an overripe cherry. "Agghh! Why does Lorelei, the aggregate sentience of the seventh fonon, have to contact so painfully when it tries to get me to do a hyperresonance so that it can see what one looks like?" Just then, a voice came from the nearby window.

"Luke! Not one of those headaches agai… ummm, why are you wearing a clown wig? You weren't messing with using your hyperresonance on your hair again, were you?" asked the servant, his spiky blonde hair bouncing slightly as he jumped down from the windowsill to help Luke up.

"So what if I was? C'mon, Guy, you're the only person I told about this. Don't make fun of it. You know what happened last time." Luke said, smirking evilly.

"Yeah," said Guy with much hesitation, "That color never did completely wash out of those clothes. Though the way I see it, because of your short fuse, I lost the cool-looking outfit I'm supposed to wear during this game, and so I'm stuck wearing this bartender outfit, which is EXTREMELY ITCHY! AND it's a girl magnet. Just my luck, I'm stuck with people asking me about wines this entire adventure." A knock comes at the door. "Uh oh," Guy said, rushing to the window, "I better leave before I'm seen. See you at the Tartarus, Luke!" Guy said as he hopped out of the window.

As Luke opened the door, he noticed that the knock had been the sound of a nearby maid slamming into the door. "Guy wasn't kidding when he called those clothes a girl magnet," he thought as he walked past the stunned maid and towards the drawing room.


	2. Swordplay & Singing Lessons

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

_Of Swordplay and Singing Lessons_

Luke happily trudged out to the courtyard on his way to the drawing room, where he was to meet Master Van. He wondered for a moment what Van would have to talk about with him that he came by on a day that wasn't even a training day. Any other day that decade (all training days) this wouldn't have been such a big deal, but today it was just creepy.

Passing through the entry room he noticed Guy shining one of the sets of armor. "Liar!" he yelled, "You said we wouldn't see each other until the Tartarus, but I can see you perfectly right now, and the gardener said that you'll be out in the courtyard when I'm practicing with my sword! You'll even see when I get abducted by Tear as she tries to kill her brother!"

"Uh, Luke, you're not supposed to know that you're about to be abducted by Van's sister. You're supposed to be in the drawing room, listening to Van tell you that Fonmaster Ion, a sickly pale kid who just so happens to be another main storyline character _and _a fellow replica, has gone missing from Daath, and that Van has been dispatched to go find him, so he'll have to miss a few training days," Guy said in one miraculously long breath.

Luke proceeded to bring up an excellent point regarding this exchange: "Guy, is either one of us supposed to know this much?"

"I don't know," Guy admitted, "but it sure makes for some awkward situations, doesn't it? And isn't that what a parody is all about?"

"Parody?"

"Never mind. Now go meet with Van so that this fic can actually get somewhere!"

"Fic…?"

"I SAID GO ALREADY!" Guy screamed as several maids flew across the room at him.

Said flying maids blasted Luke through the door into the drawing room, which surprisingly surprised no one. They simply regarded Luke coolly, though his mother's bulging forearm muscles twitched slightly. "What took you so long, ya freakish li'l squirt?" she boomed in her deep voice. "You trip over yer feat every half a second like usual. Look at me when I'm talking at you, yarn-head! And take that circus wig off or I'll send you to one permanently!"

In truth, Luke's mother was nigh impossible to look at, and was a medical mystery of the highest order. Without any steroids of any kind she had worked out until she could (this had been tried) lift and carry roughly ¼ of Baticul for 34.2 miles, give or take. She was also, by popular opinion, the ugliest freak on Auldrant. His father, on the other hand, was a gentle, loving man with a serious bipolar disorder, which was extremely active during the Hod war 10 years ago, which was why he went nuts and killed a bunch of noble Malkuth families. Today was a good day, so he wasn't having _too_ much trouble controlling himself. (Note emphasis)

Dorian General Van Grants, Oracle Knight Commandant, commander of the elite top 6 members of the oracle knights (nice name) seemed a completely different matter. He was calm, cool, collected, not freakishly muscular, not bipolar, and had extremely, magically mighty facial hair. Beneath it all, though, were many secrets that he would kill to protect, if told to do so. If not…

"Luke," began Duke Fabre, "Master Van has come to tell you some highly secretive information that would cause widespread panic if it got into the hands of, say, a gossipy maid."

"Indeed," began Van in his best calming voice, "but unless that's the case, the public should be blissfully unaware that the Fon Master is on the loose. Ion is an extremely dangerous man, capable of unleashing up to 12 daathic fonic artes at a time constantly over a period that has never been measured, but is longer than half an hour. He is as strong as your mother, and a master of every weapon known to man and some that we never thought of before. He is also small, lovable, 14 years old, green haired, and he speaks with the same soft, innocent voice he uses in the actual ToA."

"Wow, nice monologue," joked Luke, "but I already knew he was missing. One of the more gossipy maids told me. She also said that Van would have to miss some training days to go and search for him. Van, I'm taking that out of your allowance. Anyway, got anything new to tell me before Van asks me if I'd like to practice today in a pathetic attempt to earn back some of his allowance?"

They all stared. At Van. They had had no idea that Van lived off the allowance Luke gave him. They had either thought of it like a tip or an absolutely pathetic waste of cash done by a worthless child, depending on which one you asked.

Van began to cry. "How can you be so mean to me?!" he wailed through racking sobs and coughs. "It's just because my sister destroyed Hod, isn't it? I tried to get her to take singing lessons somewhere else, but noooooo, she insisted on doing it at home. It's not my fault! IT"S NOT MY FAULT!!" Van's crying had filled about an inch off the room's floor with water by now, and his thumb sucking quickly became… I don't think English has a word for anything this humiliating.

Luke, being somewhat humane in this fic, quickly calmed things down. "Okay, Van, I'll still give you a full allowance this time, but never do this again. It's creepy having you wailing like you're two."

Van stood up, eyes drying instantly. "Thank you, Luke. Now by your leave mistress, we must begin our training." Van walked out, still being stared at by Luke's parents, and Luke followed him out to the courtyard to begin practice.

"Master," Luke asked, "since I already know how to do all the noobish stuff you're about to try to teach me, can we just skip to the part where I get abducted by Tear?"

Van blinked. "And you want to be abducted because…?

"Because otherwise I'll just run back and forth doing really easy and incredibly basic combat maneuvers that could be learned by a highly advanced fish, which I have a greater mental capacity than. Besides, I already know I'm going to get kidnapped. Why not get it over with now?"

"Very well, then," Van calmly said.

The courtyard was immediately pierced by the WORST SINGING IN EXISTANCE! This could barely be called singing as much as an absolutely vicious assault on anything in hearing range. Windows shattered, men fell unconscious, the metal plate in the middle of the courtyard cracked, and a woman walking by outside of Baticul had to be rushed to the emergency room for severe brain trauma.

"Well, here she is," Van said as he calmly stepped out of the way. As staff rang against cheap imitation wooden sword, a familiar (to Luke) light shone between them, and they were whisked away. The commotion was immediately followed by Luke's father coming out to the courtyard, coolly surveying the mess and then screaming at the top of his lungs, "WHO WAS IT?! I'LL RIP THEIR ARMS FROM THEIR SOCKETS! I'LL BRUSH THEIR TEETH WITH MY SWORD, I'LL…I'll…I'll miss ya, Luke.


	3. The Fonmaster

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

_The Fonmaster_

Luke woke up with his head spinning. He had never been caught in a hyperresonance he didn't cause, and hadn't expected it to be so jarring. The last time he'd felt so dizzy was when he accidentally caused a smallish tornado in his room with a hyperresonance. Luke sat up and, looking around, noticed a girl with flowing long hair and an extremely vacant-yet-evil expression on her face. "Ah," he said slowly, "you must be Van's sister who destroyed Hod with her singing lessons. It's nice to meet you, and I'd like to keep it that way, so please don't start singing."

Tear jolted out of her thoughts as she heard the boy begin to speak. _Great, _she thought, _he woke up too soon .Now I can't get a monster to kill this goody two-shoes little monkey so that he won't screw up my diabolical plans. _This is not what she said. This is. "I'm really sorry for transporting us all the way to Tataroo Valley here in Malkuth. Are you injured? Where does it hurt?"

Luke was personally amazed at such a friendly greeting after he reviewed his briefing of this chapter. "W-Wait," he stammered, "aren't you supposed to be the real villain behind this fic? If so, then why are you asking to help me instead of running me through?"

_Shoot, _thought Tear, _he's on to me. Van, you better not have told him I'm the puppeteer behind all this or so help me, I'll send you to bed without supper OR a bedtime story!!_ "Of course I'm not the villain," Tear flat out lied to Luke, "If I was, wouldn't I have planned to have you killed by a monster in your sleep? As you can see, I didn't, which makes me definitely NOT the bad guy."

Luke agreed with this logic, and the pair quickly set off into the valley. Luke's skill with a sword was exemplary, as he had played through this game several times. Tear, however, was stuck with nothing but her basic gear and artes, and so soon fell far behind Luke. "Hurry up, you slug, or it'll take forever to reach the coach at the bottom of this valley."

Tear, coming from 200 yards behind him, was fuming. _Call me a slug, will you? I'll be sure to make your death all the more torturous. _"I'm just a little tired from that hyperresonance, that's all. Oh, and just to reassure you, I'm not the slightest bit offended at being called a slug, and I'm not planning to give you a long, torturous death because you called me that."

Surprised again, Luke turned towards her. "Why would you think that I thought you were doing those things anyway? I know you well enough to know that you're not planning anything evil or deadly in the slightest, except maybe your hymn-singing in the next battle."

"Hello, there!" rang the cry from the man holding the bucket of water. "I heard you two bickering while I was still on the road, so I hoped to get your business sooner than the other jerk on this road could take it. To the capital, I suppose? That'll cost one Tear's pendant accessory, please."

Tear paid gladly, all the while thinking_, Hah! One less tie to the past. I can't afford to be dragged down by memories when I start my replication choir._ Unbeknownst to Auldrant, but knownst to the author and readers, Tear had discovered a way of creating replicas by using fonic hymns, but the required volume would be tremendous, which was why she was planning on building a choir of replicas to help her.

Anyway, their trip to Engeve was entirely uneventful. Oh, except that the carriage they were riding in could fly and had tons of passengers, including a woman with severe body odor and a young boy who constantly tried to shove ice cubes down their backs. Oh, yeah and the hover drive burned out and the coach crashed in a giant fireball and everybody died.

Except for them. You know why? It's because they had their tray tables up and their seat backs in the full upright position. Anyway, after that minor ordeal, they walked their way to a small village called Engeve, which excited Luke greatly because he'd never been in a tiny little farming village before, and found it quite exhilarating. Anyway, on their way there had been much conflict and brutal verbal war over a single, horrifying topic.

"How can you call that little rice crispy treat a meal?! You even charred the outside of it black in that collapsible pocket oven of yours!"

_Insulting my cooking as well, you fool? You will suffer gruesomely indeed… _"I told you, it was an accident! I didn't _mean _for it to get all blackened and sticky. And what the heck is a rice crispy treat? That sounds like something an author might say."

"…Author...?"

This pointless bickering continued until they finally reached the small hamlet of Engeve, which turned out to be less exhilarating than Luke had hoped. Their exploration of the town, which they accurately judged as being extremely paranoid, was cut short by a cascade of criminal accusations from several villagers, who swiftly escorted (dragged) him to the house of a lady named Phil. Tear hoped that, whatever Luke had done, it was worthy of a death sentence.

"Phil, Phil! We caught him! We caught the guy who's been smuggling food into the storehouse!" Luke, thoroughly confused by all of this, tried several times to ask what was so evil about smuggling food _into _a storehouse, even though he hadn't done it. This was unfailingly greeted with a hard punch in the face and an order from one of the men to shut up.

They were entirely ignored as they entered the building, as a small crowd was there watching a pale, green haired, lovable boy talk in a serene, optimistic tone to a military official.

(For maximum enjoyment of the next paragraph, read out loud in your best impression of Ion's most peaceful voice)

"You wanna go? You wanna go? It's been too long since I slaughtered another human. I have at least 1,003,456,912 ways I can kill you with just the nail at the end of my pinky. You wanna know how many ways I've got if I use my entire finger? Huh? HUH?"

Luke paled. He whispered to Tear, "I think that's the Fonmaster Master Van said was on the loose. He doesn't look so strong to me."

Ion proceeded to lift a random peasant by the collar, throw him through the roof, and strike him 300,000 times with a sword before the man even started to fall.

"Oh," said Luke, astonished as anyone else there (not very), "I see."

**Another disclaimer: I copied a little of Weird Al Yankovic's song "Albuquerque". The song is his, not mine, however much I wish it was.**


	4. Diamonds are Better than Jade

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

_Diamonds are Better than Jade _

"Ahhhhhh**," **came an extremely calm sounding voicefrom near Fonmaster Ion, who had just slaughtered a random townsperson like it was a perfectly normal greeting. "Just another normal day, I take it?" the sarcastic voice continued. "If you'll excuse us, the Fonmaster and I have to talk with Lady Phil here about the peace treaty between Kimlasca and Malkuth that will finally patch up relations between the two countries, in regards to which I'm representing the Emperor and the Fonmaster is serving as motiva- err, mediator. None of you know anything about this according to the plotline, so you didn't hear anything I just said." This logic seemed to appease the people, as they knew Jade well enough to consider this sarcasm, so they went right back to ranting about the capture of the food smugglers.

"All right, all right, who put all the poisoned food in the storehouse?" asked Lady Phil in a falsetto so high you could hear Jade's glasses fight for their lives against the vibrations.

"This obviously innocent red-haired kid with the clown wig and hyperresonance powers was placing all the stuff in the storehouse!" yelled another of the random people in the room, just before the Fonmaster began asking him incredibly violent questions in the _real_ ToA Ion's serene voice.

"So, boy, do you have something to say for yourself?" asked Phil.

"Ummm, I'm hungry?" Luke guessed.

"You were supposed to either apologize or say something incriminating." remarked Phil. "Something like, "You'll never take me alive!" or, "How did you find me out?!" "Anyway, why were you putting poisoned food in with the rest of our food? If you have a grudge with someone, kill them personally. Don't kill everyone in Engeve unless we all ticked you off. The food has been removed, and no harm was done, so we'll let you off this time."

"Wait, if no harm was done, than how do you know the food was poisoned?" asked Luke.

"W-well why else would someone smuggle food into our storehouse?" asked Lady Phil. "We have all the fruits, vegetables, and cheagle meat we'll need to last the winter and make a profit on sales."

Ion twitched at the mention of cheagle meat. If there was one thing he couldn't stand, (actually there were many things he couldn't stand) it was someone who messed with any part of the Order of Lorelei, including the cheagles. "Excuse me, but did you just say _cheagle _meat?" asked Ion.

"Of course I didn't say _cheagle_ meat." Phil quickly replied. "I said cheagle meat. Those italics are the word cheagle is completely unnecessary. It changes the flavor of the meat to spicy and sweet instead of horribly, horribly, horribly bitter, and everyone knows that bitter cheagle meat is delicious."

Ion's eye twitched, hearing cheagles talked about as such. This gave him an idea. In his typical serene voice, Ion started a conversation. "Have you ever seen a person's eye ripped out? I hear it's painful to watch. Not as painful as it is to the victim, though. You want to test it? If not, then stop making cheagle meat. Capiche?"

"Yes, Fonmaster, heh heh, couldn't be clearer." Phil replied sheepishly.

Jade coughed. "You all seem to have forgotten that this chapter is named after ME, not you idiots." Jade said with no small or even medium amount of condescension in his voice. "And, as the namesake of this chapter, I say that we should just get on with this parody already."

"Fine, Fine." came the simultaneous reply from most everyone.

"Well," Tear sighed, "I suppose we should go find Anise and tell her where Ion is. I wonder how the author managed to screw Anise up any more than she already was in the game."

"Wouldn't you and the president _both _like to know." came the reply from the heavens.

Later, as they approached the inn, they saw a young, black-haired girl wearing a pink outfit. "Look, there's Anise." Luke said. "Now can we talk to her and go get something to eat? Wait, why is she picking that dude's pocket?"

Anise quickly pocketed what change she had, however illicitly, obtained and turned towards Tear and Luke. "Hi," she said cheerily. _Too cheery, _thought Tear. _Anyone this optimistic could ruin my plans by slowly turning me into an… an… epic character! This must be stopped. She'll die with the rest of the world when I destroy it with my Destruction Choir! First, I'll need a Destruction Choir..._

Tear moaned for, as far as Luke and Anise could tell, no reason whatsoever. "Tear," Anise asked concernedly, "are you hurt? I implicitly trust you, since you don't seem the kind of person that would, say, plot someone's death via something stupid, like a destruction choir, so I really am worried about you."

"It's nothing," Tear straight out lied (again), "I'm just tired and needing a bed. You must be Anise. Let's just skip to the part where we tell you Ion's at Phil's place."

"Wow, how'd you know my first name? For the record the full name is Ionian Sergeant Anise Tatlin Oracle Knights Grand Maestro Mohs' sp- err, Fonmaster Guardian. Y'know, for Fonmaster Ion. Definitely not working for that Mohs creep. No, most definitely not."

"Uh huh, and what's your proof that that's what they were thinking, you cute little member of the Order of Lorelei?" Ion's voice caught everyone off guard. The storyline didn't include this little meeting. Ion quickly provided an answer. "I came to make sure you followed the plot." he explained. "If you don't come to the cheagle woods and meet with the cheagles tomorrow, I will rip out your heart and replace it with a watch battery. Understood?" Nods came from all, including Jade, who had just shown up to remind everyone that HE was the namesake of this chapter. Not Luke, not Tear, not Ion, him, Jade the Necromancer, who the author seemed to be largely ignoring. He slapped Anise's hand as it reached into his pocket.

"Uh, Anise?" Luke asked, "Why were you picking that man's pocket?"

Anise replied, with just a hint of a smile, "I decided to get an alias and, since my family owes more money than we have, I decided to become Robinette Hoodless, stealer from the rich, giver to the poorest family she knows of, hers!" This drew strange looks from everyone but Jade who, being sarcastic, had a reply.

"But of course Anise," he began, "your family simply _must _need the money more than the people you take it from. After all, they actually _have _gald, unlike your _obviously _victimized family, which has been living _so poorly _for the past few years. I mean, only _two _mansions. Times must indeed be hard for you."

Anise sighed. "I guess you know our problem then. Can I have some loose change to try and help us get our third one back?" Anise was on her knees, begging her best, but merely getting Jade's suit wet. She then noticed that he had what looked like a wet spot along his suit directly below his chin. "Jade," she asked, "were you drooling recently?"

"Oh, that." Jade said dismissively. "That's just what happens when my voice starts dripping with sarcasm. Just wait, I bet this will be _completely _forgotten by the end of this chapter.

The wet spot got that much larger.


	5. Small and Fuzzy

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

_The Cheagle Rocks_

"So, remind me again why we have to go to the cheagle forest if there's nothing that indicates that cheagles have anything to do with this?" Yet another question that Tear could only answer with "the plotline says so". Luke's questions had gotten old by the 4007th time he'd-

"Are we there _yet?_"

-400_8_th time he'd asked if they were there yet. _Your petty whining has interrupted my evil plotting __**again**__, fool. This will have repercussions._ "No, Luke, we aren't there yet but if you'll shut up and let us walk two steps on the world map, we will be."

Luke didn't entirely understand this. "World map?"

Tear ignored Luke, walking the two steps to the cheagle forest. Luke followed and, in accordance with the storyline, they saw ion surrounded by liger… skeletons, with a HUGE blaze of light in the center. The radiant sphere slowly dimmed, showing a worried looking Ion inside. Ion, on noticing Luke and Tear, quickly ran over to them and, not too surprisingly, punched Tear hard enough to send her back to Engeve. Very surprisingly, he hid quivering behind Luke and asked, in a horrified voice, "Are the fuzzy things gone?"

Luke, shocked into silence by this scene was, obviously, silent. Ion was more persistent than that though. "Tell me if the fuzzy things are gone before I make a hole in you to check for myself."

Luke hastened to meet this latest request. "See those skeletons? That's all that's left. No skin, no small laugh fuzz, nothing but those bones. You obliterated them. So, why are you scared of fuzzy things?"

"I'm not, they just jumped me and that was the only detail I noticed before peeling them like onions." Ion's lying, while straight-faced, could be read easier than this next word. Hi. He was mortally afraid of those things, and even Tear, only halfway back from Engeve, could tell he was lying by the little speech bubbles over his head.

"So," Luke continued, "can I have a capacity core? I lost my original Stre when I sold it for 3 million gald to some desperate rich kid."

"Fine," Ion said throwing it at him hard enough to knock 30 feet backwards into a tree. Thus began another interesting train of thought, just as Tear finally made her way back to the clearing.

"Wait, the cheagle woods are _petrified?!_" Luke shouted, surprised to feel his back strike stone.

Tear was unforgiving as usual. "Obviously. If you didn't notice that the instant we came in here, you have passed into an entirely new realm of total idiocy."

Luke, for once, had a good comeback. "Well excuse me, Miss Obvious. In case you hadn't noticed, there are no pictures in this fic! I wouldn't even know that my hair looks like a clown wig except that the author keeps bringing it up at very awkwa…" Luke blinked. "He just did it again through me, didn't he?" Tear nodded, then turned to Ion.

_Now, let's see if superman here will tell me why he knocked me to Engeve. Whatever the reason, he will pay dearly when we reach the cheagle pillar._ Tear spoke calmly. "Ion, why did you punch me back to Engeve when you saw us?"

Ion paled and began speaking even more serenely than usual. "Your hair looked like a liger from where I was." Tear began opening her mouth to protest her looking like a hideously scuffed liger, but was interrupted by Ion's most serene voice yet. "Comment on it and I'll treat you like you _are_ one of them." Tear closed her mouth, but her mind kept talking to itself. _Calling me a liger? I'll be sure to introduce you to something even you can't defeat._

As they continued into the cheagle's petrified forest, they quickly learned that Ion was a worthless aid in combat, as many of these monsters were "fuzzy" and so it was the most they could do to keep him from having anxiety-induced comas and heart failure, though arguably this could have been one of their greatest gifts to Auldrant. Anyway, as soon as they made it to the cheagle's tree/pillar, things once again got interesting enough for me to put them in this fic.

"Hey, look," Luke pointed, "it's those apples we were supposed to find if this fic _actually _followed the plot. Except that there are more of them and they're in a cart and they don't have the mark of Engeve on them and I'm not a jerk and Tear's evil and Ion's a sadist and I shouldn't know that Tear's evil and" Luke never finished this sentence, as Tear began to fear for her plot and pounded Luke through into the cheagle tree/pillar.

There being nothing else to do, Tear and Ion walked after him into the tree… almost. "Ion, there may be some fuzzy things in there at first," Tear said, knowing that there was only one chamber, "so maybe you should shut your eyes so that you don't freak out and make a crater out of the tree."

Ion punched her through the entrance for even _thinking _he was afraid of a little fuzz. He then entered the chamber, and gave a high-pitched scream of absolute horror. This coincided with Tear's squeal of delight and, oddly, both were for the same reason: a huge number of small, fuzzy (cute, if you asked Tear) cheagles were surrounding them. Ion just gave up on this thing and passed out. Tear went crazy and started grabbing every last cheagle in the room and… cuddling it. _Ooooookay, THAT was NOT what I was expecting,_ thought Luke as Tear continued her hugging rampage and Ion began to drool.

When Tear finally calmed down and was only hugging one cheagle, a large purple one stepped out from behind the others, who had clustered together to help protect themselves from Tear's cuteness-induced insanity. "Blah blah blah," said the cheagle, "I'm the cheagle elder, take the little freak your friend is choking as a translator, and here's the sorcerer's ring so that he can translate and spit a ton of fire. We smuggled the food into the storehouse as a peace offering just in case we had to move to Engeve if the ligers eat most of us. I read my chapter briefing, so that should answer all your questions. Now go kill the liger queen."

Luke, the last mentally capable party member, was surprised as usual by this new thing. "Wow, you're pretty demanding for a little fire breathing rodent I could step on if I really wanted to. I suppose being a maniacal dictator will do that to you."

"What do you mean maniacal dictator, you incheagle buffoon!" the elder demanded as her throne of cheagles sagged and her attendants beat their fans faster. "I am not a dictator in any way! Now if you'll excuse me, my slav- er, chefs have prepared my evening meal, so I shall leave you slobbering imbeciles," she glanced at Ion, "to your own devices." As she walked out, Ion awoke screaming.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! THIS CAN'T BE THE END OF THE CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


	6. Another chapter, ppl

**I apologize to those of you have waited 3 weeks for this. One word: vacation.

* * *

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**Disclaimer: If I owned Tales of the Abyss, I'd probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

_Woot! A new chapter!_

As Luke, Ion, Tear, and a small blue cheagle left the tree/pillar the cheagles lived in, Luke stubbed his toe on a small crease of rock. But who cares. Mieu, apparently, since he was immediately at his new master's side, trying to help him up and encourage him. "Don't worry master; this clumsiness should clear up by the time we get to fight the liger queen. I can't wait to fight her. Do you know just how _delicious_ liger meat is? It's one of the most delicious things in all of Auldrant, especially the heart, stomach, and liver. The goo inside them dribbles down your chin, and the blood serves as a rich gravy, and-"

Luke, hurling into the small pool nearby, quickly kicked Mieu into 4 minutes ago to get away from this interesting lunch prospect. He _was_ hungry, but not so hungry as this latest little freak seemed to be. And that voice! Luke's vicious punt had been the only thing that kept that falsetto from vibrating every tree/pillar thing in this forest to flaky stone dandruff. Something would have to be done about that…

Of course, now came the problem with kicking something into the past: It comes back instantly. Mieu stood nearby, rubbing his right ear where the kick had landed. "Moron Luke, that hu-" Mieu choked to a sudden stop in mid-sentence. With a very worried look he glanced at Luke's glowing finger and evil grin. "Master," Mieu began but stopped immediately. What had this man done to his beautiful singing voice?! It sounded deeper than old Bob's voice back in the tree/pillar thingy.

"Master," rumbled Mieu in an earthshaking bass, "what the #!$? did you do that for? I was planning a future career for myself using that voice. I was going to be a Broadway star!" Mieu stopped to review the last few sentences. "Master, what does #!$? mean? It doesn't even have any letters in it except the "s" in the $ , and even that's kinda sketchy."

"Mieu," Luke began compassionately.

"Yes, master?"

"Shut up before we have _Ion_ punt you." Luke said, lifting Mieu towards Ion, who ran away with a high-pitched girly scream of utter terror. "Oh, right. Forgot about that." Luke said with a strange calm. "I hope he comes back in time to remind me to save you just before the fight with the liger queen." Luke added to Mieu.

_So do I_, Tear thought, _anything that cute and fuzzy could easily be used to attract weak minded, cuteness obsessed girls to my cause. I mean, come on, those long, floppy ears, that cute little button of a nose, you gotta admit that he's adorab- no – must – not – give – in – to – supreme – cuteness – impulses._

And they walked on, Mieu staring warily at Luke, Tear fighting a nigh irresistible urge to glomp Mieu, and Luke looking around for Ion, without whom they wouldn't be able to complete the storyline or even get to fight with the liger queen.

Eventually they found him, crouching behind a conveniently placed Wal-Mart with several thousand packages of recently eaten Twinkies. "I don't want to ask, and I don't care anyway. Come on." Luke said as he dragged a cowering Ion to his feet.

Ion, enraged at this treatment, shoved Luke's hands away. "Touch me again and I'll make sure it's harder to do next time. And I am NOT crying. I'm just disappointed that the power tool section was completely sold out." Ion stood, up wiped his nose, tripped, got up, blew up the Wal-Mart in 1.8 seconds and continued on with Luke's little freak show.

Anyway, eventually, after much pitched battle that I cannot show you due to the lack of pictures at my disposal, they came to the liger queen's lair. Upon entering, they heard a surprisingly happy voice greet them. "Woot! Free food!"

"What the…" Tear said, caught off guard by the beast speaking the native language of Hod.

"W8, brb." The voice continued, as they heard the lifting of a large body.

Mieu affirmed everyone's worst fear. "That was the Liger queen," he said, "she was speaking leet."

Tear was startled. If the _main characters_ didn't even know they were in a video game, how did this liger know? Even more disturbing was that only a player character could have spoken in gamer slang, and player characters never died, which meant…

"K, ppl, im bak." The liger queen said walking into the room and adjusting her glasses. "So, accrding to the scrpt im sposed 2 kill u. Or at least give it a good try. But 1st," the queen stopped, roaring like a thousand enraged dachshunds, as pebbles fell from the roof.

Jade appeared in the entrance, with his most glowingly sarcastic grin. "AAAAAAHHHHH!!!" he said in a completely calm voice. "The roof is collapsing. Run before it crushes you. Then again, don't; if you did it would spoil all my fun later in this fic." Suddenly he changed to a more serious voice, but so slightly more serious that no one noticed. "Oh, and Tear, I know what you're planning, and I will do absolutely everything in my power to stop you." He said flatly as Luke blocked a speck of dust from hitting Mieu's head.

"Master, I'm not quite sure that counts as saving me, but its close enough to the storyline to work anyway." Mieu was, by now, completely unimpressed by the supreme master of all things combat, Ion, who was currently sitting in the far corner, sucking both of his thumbs at once and muttering about the titanic fuzzball that had come to take him to the afterlife.

Several things happened at once at this point: the liger queen went into a combat crouch and growled "noobs", Luke drew his sword and entered a battle stance, Tear coughed, raised her staff and prepared to sing, Mieu took a deep breath, Ion gave an extremely low-pitched scream of agony (he had bitten his tongue), and Jade pulled out a copy of _High Fonic Artes for Total Imbeciles_.

The battle was, expectedly, short, as Jade found a verse he really thought he could get behind. "Oh scathing inflection," he shouted above the din of Tear's cacophony, "sarcasm hammer!!" A huge, blinding mallet appeared out of nowhere and, with old cartoon style, flattened the liger queen who, not being an old cartoon character, couldn't bounce back so easily. "Oops," Jade continued, "I didn't mean to do that. Really. Honest." Tear and Luke just stared. What else could they do? Seriously, I'm open to suggestions.

"Here's one," Mieu shot back at the author for that last comment, "why don't you give me back my normal, beautiful voice so that I can quit and become a broadway star like I always dreamed?"

Well, ppl, that's all the time we have for this chapter. Next time, we introduce the Tar- wait and see. It should be good.

"HEY! WHAT ABOUT M-"


	7. Where that doll really came from

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

**Where that doll **_**really **_**came from**

Tear was ticked. Jade seemed to be able to read her mind, Mieu had gotten a restraining order, they had been in this forest so long that they had run out of decent food, and Luke was starting to mess with her hair. If he changed it to neon gray one more time, she would have to resort to somewhat more…violent measures. Like telling Ion exactly what she wanted him to think Luke thought of him.

Mieu, on the other hand, was quite happy. He had gotten a restraining order that kept Tear from getting close enough to glomp/throttle him (they were about the same), he had literally_ tons _of petrified berries to eat, and this Luke was much nicer than the one he was supposed to be stuck with.

Jade was more ticked off than Tear, though he only showed it by increasing the number and intensity of his sarcastic comments. Some could not be looked at directly without some sort of eye protection. They had set up camp in the same spot for a month and a half and a quarter and an eighth and a sixteenth, and still his ship hadn't showed. He was beginning to wonder if something happened to slow its progress.

Luke was just bored. The second meeting with the cheagle elder hadn't quite gone the way he'd hoped. "Take the little blue slave with you," she had said, as if their lives were her personal possessions. "and keep the ring so that he can spit fire on stuff and eventually hit stuff and fly." Not exactly enlightening, but he supposed they had had to get through the conversation somehow. He just hoped that they never had to come back here again, and was relieved when I showed him the script, which said they didn't.

Ion was back to relatively normal, telling everyone to find the ship before he (stroked large sword) decided to make them short enough to look over. He was utterly mortified that they knew his secret, and so resolved to be even nastier in hopes of making them forget it.

A bug on the ground was having a very good day until it was suddenly crushed by Tear's unknowing boot, directed by her knowing mind.

Anise was having a tea party with some of her new friends onboard Jade's recently remodeled (by her) ship. The changes had taken an extra fourth and an eighth and a sixteenth of a month, but they had gotten them done, and now the ship was ready to do its _true_ duty as a carrier of messengers of peace. She hoped Luke and the others didn't have too tough a time waiting. After all, they were stuck together for basically the entire fic. She hoped there wasn't something weird, like an evil Tear, a sarcastic Jade, Ion being afraid of fuzzy things, or Luke playing with hyperresonance, which would have made this harder on them.

As Anise pulled the ship to a stop, she could tell that things were perfectly fine. Or at least they hadn't imploded the _entire_ forest. She found them with the help of a fonon emitter she had hidden in Luke's clown hair, parked the ship about a kilometer away, and began the short enough walk to pick them up. She walked into the camp, flanked by a pair of soldiers, who were mostly there for show, and said to the mildly surprised assemblage, "C'mon, slowpokes! We gotta get the story line moving. Luke, we're trying to prevent a war, but that's all I'm going to tell you or Tear. Oh, and I love your money- I mean you."

Luke and Tear, too stunned by this recent shift in their daily monotony, simply followed Anise. Jade followed along behind, giving Anise a cordial nod. It had worked exactly according to plan, if a fourth and an eighth and a sixteenth of a month later than they had actually planned for it to happen.

As they neared the ship, Jade thought the name on the starboard side seemed a little different, but he couldn't make it out at this range, so he didn't worry too badly. Taking the elevator to the main halls made him uneasy, though, as it appeared Anise had tried and succeeded in giving the elevators highly annoying, if freakishly catchy, music. When he finally saw the interior, everyone even Jade, was utterly shocked: the ship's halls were lined with shelves containing every possible entertainment method it was possible to use on kids younger than 10. "Gentlemen, lady, beloved Luke, welcome to the Toys 'R Us."

_WARNING: The following paragraph may contain the only really serious non-Tear-related thing Jade says in this fic. It will be strange and funny, and I am not personally responsible if you bust your gut laughing. Or not. I just write the stuff, I don't control whether you think it's funny or not._

Jade couldn't take this. The only thing in the world he'd genuinely loved since his first taste of Grand Chokmah's curry, and Anise had seen fit to defile it like this! He would have his sarcastic revenge. He would paint maddened smilies all around her room if he had to. Jade broke down, wandering out to the middle of the aisle, knelt down, and began to weep piteously, all the time muttering, "How? When? Why? Who would have…? Who could have…?" He stood up, eyes totally dried in an instant as he stated with his typically calm voice, "I need some curry." and walked out of the room.

Ion was just sick of all this. There didn't seem to be anyone here to threaten/maim/kill/mutilate on this ship, with the exception of his now normal traveling companions. He needed someone new, since these current companions didn't seem exactly scared of his threats now, and he preferred someone who squirmed a bit when he threatened them. Suddenly brightening, he remembered that a ship must have a crew, and so went looking of some heads to crack.

And so the remaining members of the traveling circus separated: Tear to find recruits to help her destroy Auldrant, Luke to the kitchen Anise to go and tell Jade he didn't need to find a way to thank her, and maybe show him her awesome new friend, who she had named Tokunaga because all the _good _names were taken. Mieu went rummaging through the toy boxes in search of a voice changer. He didn't find one, so he'll just have to trust that I'll give him back his voice eventually. Next time, Arietta the Rude.


	8. THBBBTTTT!

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

**THBBBBBBBTTTTT!!!!!**

Jade sat alone in his room in the newly christened Toys 'R Us. Amazingly, it seemed that Anise had not been so maniacally intent on destroying his ship as he had thought: his room was virtually untouched. Jade sat at a desk, quietly eating his curry and pondering his sarcastic revenge on Anise for what she'd done. He was in no great rush for a plan though. She would suffer, sarcastically, eventually.

As the ship moved toward Kimlasca, Tear and Luke were waiting for the scene in which they would be offered the choice of whether or not to help these people. Luke didn't want to, but Tear thought the prospect of sabotaging them from the inside too useful and close to resist. Of course, she had one problem that had become more and more a nuisance recently and there was only one way to solve it…

Tear hurled the board across the room, hitting Luke in the forehead. "Sore loser, huh?" Luke said with a shocked look on his face as he massaged his forehead. "Just because I've beaten you all 792 times we've played checkers you think that means you can throw it at me?"

_Fool, I already had that right when we started. And why'd you have to move? That throw would have hit you perfectly in the temple if you hadn't twitched. _Instead of this, though, she tried to say in a sheepish voice, "Best 793 out of 1,585."

Ion was enjoying this ship. Beneath the seeming emptiness of the ship, there seemed to be no end to the number of people here that he could threaten/maim/kill. There were some places with huge numbers of hideously fluffy things, but he quickly learned to avoid these and get on with his fun. Strangely, though, many of the people he saw were examining these fuzzy things, almost as though they were going to buy them! The fools clearly had no idea what those things were capable of. They had nearly killed him once, and he would not let them come near him or the Order of Lorelei again.

"Hi, Ion!" came the characteristically singsong voice of Anise from behind him. "Wanna see the cool little thing I bought?" Anise continued. Ion turned, smiling, then leapt backwards screaming. That couldn't have been Anise! Anise would never let anything that fuzzy get so very close to him! That little puppet must have mimicked Anise's voice to set him off guard so that it could kill him. Well, he'd escaped its little trap, and now he could find the real Anise and ask her to deal with it. She was his guardian after all.

Anise stood stunned. Why had Ion left so fast? He had practically flown away, and all she had wanted to do was show him her new friend Tokunaga. All she had done was hold him up so that Ion could examine him, and maybe buy him for her. She didn't have the cash to spend, since her family was saving up so that they could afford to buy back their third mansion. Of course, Luke's money would be useful, but he didn't seem to be the kind to just give it away to charities or anything like that, so she figured she'd just have to marry him to get at his cash. Oh well. Time to rob from the rich and give to the poor (a.k.a her)! Robinette Hoodless would ride again!!

While I was explaining all this to you, the scene where Luke and Tear agreed to help was passing, so that just happened.

Jade was walking along, explaining the opposite of what was going on, since that was what Tear and Luke both expected, when a strange sound came from somewhere nearby. Tear cleared her throat, Luke drew his sword, and Jade pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and started talking.

"Colonel! We have a smallish girl with pink hair up here on deck calling everyone names! She's mean and rude and obnoxious and we hate her! So until you give us orders to destroy her, we're not steering this heap of junk!" Jade sighed; wondering at what point Anise had seen fit to make her best friend captain of the Toys 'R Us. Whiny little Esina couldn't _live_ unless she had something to gripe about. The one day she had tried to they had had to take her to the hospital, where she had complained about the beds being too hard, and then stood up instantly healed. Anyway, he wasn't sure just who was up there they were so worried about. Small, pink-haired and rude were all fitting, but if they hadn't noticed-

"And I demand to know why the heck she's dressed up to look like a tuna or something!"

Jade started. This was bad news. If Arietta was here, that might mean the rest of the-

Jade did not have time to finish his thought, as a nearby door was blown open by a titanic man with a scythe, cat ears, and a suit that made him look like a mackerel. _Oh shoot_, Jade thought, _now comes the part where I lose all my awesome powers to- wait a second. What if-_

Finding his every thought seemed to keep getting cut off by the author, Jade decided to fume silently in his head. This suited the author just fine, because Jade almost gave away two of my best jokes so far.

The big man who had broken the door stood up, filled his lungs and said "Mrow!" This caught Tear, Luke, Mieu, and the author completely off guard, but Jade seemed unfazed as this latest arrival started hissing, yowling, and in general acting like an indignant tabby.

"My my, if it isn't Largo, the Black Kitten." Jade said in his typically mocking voice. "Have they been giving you enough wet food lately? I know how you hate the dry kind. Are you raiding my ship simply for fresh litter, or are you here for a reason?"

Largo, unable to make a witty comeback due to his catness, simply skipped to the part where he threw the Fon slot seal at Jade. Jade, however, had been expecting this, and countered by throwing his still held cell at it. The two collided, and the two exploded simultaneously. _Well, so much for unlimited minutes_, Jade laughed to himself.

Largo, confused by the strange loss of his latest toy, was utterly unprepared for Jade's sudden, vicious lunge. As such, he utterly failed to block it and was hit squarely in the chest. Luke, watching, was horrified.

"H-he stabbed him." Luke stammered. "R-right in the ch-chest. Hey, what's with the little number floating above his head?"

"It's simple," Tear explained. "The colonel here scored a critical hit, but one critical hit won't kill Largo, because Largo still has hitpoints left."

"Ohhhhhh, now you tell me," Luke said as he rolled his eyes. "Only after I'm out of any real danger do I learn that I could impale myself and survive"

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a man with blood-red hair appeared. He slapped Luke so hard that a small 53 appeared over Luke's head as the figure yelled, "SHUT UP, DRECK!!!" so loudly that it shook the Toys 'R Us. This strange man disappeared, leaving many questions.

"Who was that?"

"Why was he dressed like a herring?"

"Mrowr?"

Jade was the first to come back to his senses, dragging the others out behind him while Largo was required by the plot to vanish. As they fought their way to the bridge, Luke wondered why his script had said nothing about all these monsters getting onboard.

They finally reached the bridge, where a sprinting Anise told them that some weird lady with two guns, a horrible twitch, and a trout suit had captured Ion. After this Tear put the guard to sleep, left Luke outside (while hoping some 64 or so griffons would come and kill him), and went into the bridge with Jade.

Luke was bored out of his mind. He had been sitting here with noting to do for an hour now. What was taking those losers so flipping long? When he was finally reduced to considering poking the sleeping soldier for entertainment, he knew it was too far. So of course he did it. Hey, someone had to get this fic going again.

This, obviously, woke the soldier within four pokes, confronting Luke with a potentially dangerous situation. He was supposed to make this look accidental, but who would know? Luke just outright stabbed the drowsy sucker to save some time and cowering that he could use later, when he'd need to be a whiny, self sacrifice obsessed moron after he blew up Akzeriuth.

As Tear and Jade came out, they noticed two things that were supposed to be slightly different. Firstly, Luke wasn't staring at the impaled soldier; he was eating a meat & cheese sandwich. Secondly, the soldier was sitting next to him, eating a similar meal. "Ummm, Master, didn't you stab that guy last paragraph?" Mieu said in the most inquisitive tone his deep bass would allow.

"Oh yeah," Said the soldier. "Thanks for the sandwich anyway." Then he keeled over dead.

"Right," Jade said to thin air, "now can you please take us prisoner and put in a cage? This old man needs a nap before he kills anything else."

With an answering cry of, "SHUT UP!?!?" the Necromancer's wish was granted.

**First, I think it may be wise to warn you that the next chapter will be FULL of spoilers, possibly all the way up to Eldrant. **

**Second, I would like to thank everyone who has reviewed this thing, with a special thanks to Weinerdog of Death and Doom for their multiple reviews. Please keep them coming, as I generally update faster the more people seem to be reading this.**

**Third, I hope you enjoy seafood.**


	9. A Quick Clarification

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. Heck, I don't even own a copy of the game.**

**A Quick Clarification**

"Sooooo, if we were going to have to kill them eventually anyway, why not just stab them right now and be done with it? Why do we have to let them lock us up in a cell that doesn't even get cable or cell phone coverage or _anything to keep me sane?_" Luke continued his whining stampede as Jade, Tear, and Mieu purposely tried to look like they were looking for a way out other than the big "turns off cell bars. DO NOT PUSH." button in the middle of the cell, which they all figured was trapped.

Ion's presence (or lack thereof) only served to make things worse, since they had no idea if or when the ship would explode. Without anyone to protect him, Jade hoped Arietta found him before any ligers did. Mieu just wanted Luke to change his voice back to normal so that he could audition in Baticul when they got there. Tear, finally driven to insanity by her claustrophobia, began madly glomping Mieu and sucking her thumb alternately.

After a good hour or so of Luke and Mieu's whining and Tear's crazed hugging, Jade was ready to let them out. He simply used his sarcasm blade arte to cut away the walls holding the bars in the wall. "Hey, wait," Luke said with an annoyed edge in his voice, "you could have done that the whole time and you made me wait in a room totally devoid of entertainment value just so that you could get me out later? What kind of soldier are you?"

"The kind that would never have gotten us out without the aid of your great wisdom, Sir Luke." Jade said with a face so straight that Luke almost thought he was serious for a tenth of a second. Only one other incident came between them and their masterfully subtle escape plan (Kill anything and anyone that gets between us and the escape route. Hey, they _could_ have just blown a hole in the ship.).

"What the- these morons scratched my sword!" Luke griped, holding up the key of Lorelei. "This'll take forever to get fixed. They'll pay for this…"

"Ummm, Master, aren't you supposed to get that sword on Eldrant? We haven't been there yet, so how did you get it?" Mieu questioned.

"W-well," Luke stammered quickly, "it's a combination of incredible skill with 793rd order hyperresonances, knowing a few excellent smiths, and-"

Mieu looked very disapprovingly at Luke. "Master, you used cheat codes, didn't you? I knew you couldn't have taken out all that soldier's hitpoints in a single stab without some sort of help."

Luke kicked Mieu at a closed porthole. "Don't get on my back about that! Besides, have you ever heard of the sarcasm-based artes Jade's been using? How do you think he learned those, huh? At least I cheated for something actually in the game! And how do you think he got a cell phone? Those aren't even invented on Auldrant!"

Mieu, trumped, shut up to avoid any further harassment. Then he got a decent argument, so he unshut up. "Master," Mieu began with the tone of a patient teacher about to lose that patience, "you were complaining about cell phone coverage ion the cell. That means you have one, or you wouldn't have complained. You cheated for one too, so don't try turning me against the only person the author said gets to shatter the rules of time, space, and Parcheesi."

Luke, trumped, shut up to avoid any further embarrassment.

They proceeded with their masterfully subtle plan, only making detours when Tear had that look that meant she was going to sing at the next fool she wanted dead. Eventually, they made it out of the Toys R' Us, only to be ambushed by a hideously twitchy woman wearing a trout suit, Arietta in her little tuna suit, and a random bozo wearing oracle knight armor.

Only when they were finally defeated did Arietta bring Ion out of the Toys R' Us. "Please, let everyone go, Legretta." Ion was actually talking nicely to someone! "I don't want to mutilate any more members of the order than I have to. Suddenly, Legretta and Arietta looked up with startled expressions. Or maybe Legretta just twitched like that.

A figure fell in the midst of them, trying to block a storm of fire from Legretta's weapons. He couldn't though, as none of the rounds actually came close enough to be of the slightest threat. Jade managed to get Legretta under control, Arietta was busy saluting Tear and saying something about how recruiting for her evil plan was going and Luke stabbed this latest random soldier much like he had the last one. The figure, which happened to be wearing a bartender outfit, stood up and began to speak.

_Warning: The following paragraph has many spoilers. Just skip it unless you know basically everything about Guy that there is to know. If you ignore this, too bad._

"Enter the amazing Gailardia Galan Gardios, heir to the Malkuth noble family Gardios, which lived on Hod until it was destroyed by Tear's singing lessons in the middle of a battle, in which all the maids in my family and my sister all died and heaped their dead bodies on top of me, which explains my fear of women. I then wanted revenge on Duke Fabre for my dead family, so I signed on as a servant for the Fabres in the hope that I could get to kill Luke and the rest of them in retribution, which is why I try to kill Luke when Sync sticks me with a curse slot. Eventually, though, I came to like Luke after he was replicated, and so now I'm his best friend and sorta his babysitter. Also, Duke Fabre put a Gardios family heirloom, the sword of Gardios, up in his mansion as an entrance decoration."

As this ended, several things happened: Guy took a deep breath, Tear flew across the field towards Guy's girl magnet outfit, and Luke offered some sarcasm in the place of Jade. "Dude, nice monologue." Luke said. "You do know they kinda walked off in the middle of it, right?"

"What!?" Guy said with a hurt look. "Why didn't you stop them? And why is that pale, green-haired kid sitting there with a post-it note and some fuzzy dice stuck to his forehead?"

Luke looked around and, sure enough, Ion was sitting, trembling with fright and staring at some pink fuzzy dice stuck to his forehead. "What the heck?" Luke said. "How the…"

--------------------------------------------_flashback----------------------------------------------------_

_Ion had been enjoying this. It had all looked like it was going to get bloody before Mister Monologue over there had shown up. Now it was just annoying how he kept going on. And on. And on. Was this fool ever going to stop. "Oh, hello Arietta," Ion said. "How are things going for my youngest-" He never finished the sentence. Arietta had stuck something to his forehead, and apparently this something had attracted some strange, winged fuzzy thing. His only hope was to wait, hoping the beast would just eat the object on his forehead and leave. Oh man, he hoped no one saw him like this._

--------------------------------------------_present----------------------------------------------------_

Guy, with great dramatization, pulled the fuzzy dice off Ion's head while reading the post-it that had accompanied it. "Dearest morons," it began, "your friend took so long prattling on that we decided it would save time just to walk into your ship now and save you the trouble of telling us to. You have the brains of rabbits. Sincerely, Arietta the Rude, 5th of the six Cod Generals."

----------------------------------------Author's note---------------------------------------------------

_Ok, sorry that took so long. I had some troubles with our security stuff blocking the site, so this is in as early as was possible. The next chapter I hope to base off of any questions you may have. If you don't have any, I'll just continue the story. Thanks everyone for all the good reviews and I apologize again for my incredible speed._


	10. Fishy Things

**Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now. But now I have a copy of the game. Go, me.**

**Fishy Things**

"Wait, the COD generals?! What kind of fighting force are fish-dressed freaks?!" Luke was getting irate, since he was the only one who had taken all the way to St. Binah to draw the line between the fish suits and the "cod generals". "But none of them are wearing a cod suit! It just doesn't make sense!"

"It's a generalization, Luke. Live with it." Guy said testily. He was still annoyed about his monologue back at the Toys R' Us being walked out on. These Cod Generals apparently lacked not only a sense of dramatic style, but any manners whatsoever. _Though_, he chided himself, looking at his bartender outfit, _I can't really say this has any kind of dramatic style either..._ Guy's thoughts were interrupted as he was forced to dodge yet another flying female, inadvertently magnetized to his bartender clothes. This was the real reason he was annoyed. Luke just **HAD** to spill shocking pink pixels on his usually awesome outfit, and so now he had to be constantly aware, lest some random girl in the crowd fly out at him for no good reason and ask him if ND 1803 was too strong a vintage for average drinking. The heck if he knew! Had he been alive back then?

"I still wish we could have kept the Toys R' Us," Luke griped. "Hey Jade, just wondering, but how many people were on that ship anyway?"

Jade thought for a moment. "Let's see, this was supposedly a secret operation, so only about half the usual number, only around 489,354,005,123,456,789,876,543,210.2"

Luke looked worried. "Okay, firstly, there aren't that many people on all of Auldrant, so how can that be just _half _of your crew?! Oh, and, uh, what's with the little .2 at the end? It's a liiiiitle creepy."

Jade pushed up his glasses and replied- almost before Ion butted in with a sword and started screaming, "'Cause I _maimed someone_ that badly, an act I wouldn't think twice about having an encore of if you don't just _shut the heck up and get on with it already!!!_"

Everyone could tell by Ion's italics that he was trying to make up for the fuzzy dice incident by this display of utter violence. Of course, it wasn't as bad as what he'd done to the poor soldier that had ambushed them on the way to St. Binah. The poor soul. It had been all they could do to scrape the pieces together and give them something vaguely like a cremation on their campfire. And keep Mieu away from the smell. Umm, yeah…

Anyway, St. Binah proved to be very hospitable to them. They restocked, using Luke's name and thus massive potential gald payments to run up a huge tab and buy basically everything in the town save for the town itself and the people living there. The only problem came when they actually tried to leave.

"Luke, why are you slowing down? Keep moving or by the time we get back to your manor you'll be old enough to leave anyway." Tear urged, trying to push Luke forward.

Luke didn't answer, favoring the approach of shoving Tear back and getting behind a column to avoid the coming of the Cod Generals. Tear fell flat on her rear, and rolled behind a column as if she had just noticed the fishhead brigade, all the while deep in thought. _Hmm, he's not as big a moron as I thought, _she mused. _Then again, I suppose that would be quite a challenge. Still, something's wrong. I heard there were six Generals, and I only see five, so where's the sixth?_

The six generals strolled out to the area immediately in front of St. Binah. All six were assembled: Arietta the Rude, Legretta the Twitchy, Sync the Breezy, Largo the Black Kitten, and Asch the Scraped.

"Ahem," began Jade, speaking to the author, "I believe that you forgot someone."

I did say there were six generals, didn't I? Sorry, I just didn't notice the sixth before: Dist the Figment, in his entire flying lawn chair, bad-hair-day glory that is next to impossible to see, except with highly honed instruments, like Jade's glasses, or incredibly advanced, super-honed sensor equipment.

"SHUT UP!!!!!" Asch roared for no apparent reason, seeing as how none of the generals had technically spoken yet.

"Ummm, yeah, why _is_ your hair blowing like that, Sync?" Arietta questioned.

"Oh, that's what he said? I thought he was asking about why you, me, and Largo all have weird natural hair colors. Anyway, in case you didn't notice, my very title implies some kind of wind connection, and this nice little epic hair blowing is my favorite." He only left one little thing out: it was the only thing he could do with wind. He was the _breezy_, not the tempest or something cool like that.

Asch muttered a quiet, "Shut up…" and was silent. Sync, however, began flipping out. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! IS THAT THE ONLY PHRASE YOU KNOW?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? WELL IT'S GOTTEN PRETTY CONFUSING, AND I THINK IT'S TIME FOR A LITTLE UNDERSTANDING HERE!" Sync, in this fit of "shut up" induced rage pulled out his greatest weapon, leveled it at Asch, and pressed the "subtitles" button. The light came on indicating that the batteries were dead, and Sync, feeling incredibly smug, refilled his world altering remote with 26 fresh D-size batteries.

Asch lost his temper (Go figure, huh?) and started shouting back, "Shut up! SHUT UP?! SHUT …up…" Asch's trailing off was caused by the unexpected appearance of subtitles floating below his head in little turquoise letters.

"So you—can say something—besides "shut up", you say?" Legretta said sarcastically after she had read the subtitles while going through one of her constant, minor twitching spells. "Prove it." Jade was not happy about this.

"Hey, she's encroaching on my sarcastic mental property. If you don't revise this before putting it in there I will sue her down to the bitter dregs of her life." So of course I changed it. And then changed it back and put it in here anyway.

During the course of the Cod Generals' dialogue, the party had sneaked away from St. Binah, noticed only by Dist the Figment, who tried to tell the others, but was completely ignored as usual.

**Yeah, this took a long time to get up. Life happens, and not always conveniently. Anyway, **


	11. Origins of the Cod Generals

**Disclaimer: Why do I need to put this in here? Haven't I established that I don't own anything here but my story?**

**Side Chapter: Origins of the Cod Generals**

**This chapter is largely pointless. So is the entire story. But this doesn't even tie into the plot. The Oracle Knights start as a fish packing company, even!**

This is another tale of souls and economic powers. In the year… aw, heck, I don't know when all this junk happened. Anyway, Hod was destroyed by the worst rendition of Mary had a Little Lamb the world had ever known, and soon the massive tidal wave caused by it's detonation (that's right, I said DETONATION. Go, big words!) struck the mighty trade center of Feres. This had absolutely no effect on the city, since they had been listening to the news, and were able to set up the great wall of the lost country of Anich (spelled sorta backwards) around their island before the tsunami hit, 30 seconds after Hod's annihilation.

However, the long-term effects of the wave were devastating to the city. Because of some unfortunate, complex phenomenon I don't feel like making up and/or explaining, the wave drove away the fish needed for Feres' leading industry, Oracle Fish-packing Inc., which supplied 99.999999999999 of the city's revenue, the rest coming from real estate brokers and souvenir shops (more so from the souvenir shops). This caused total chaos, since everyone at the company had needed training for the occasional time or two per week that someone would accidentally pull up an ancylopolyp or a replicantis or something equally annoying. Many of these men became the original Oracle Knights, since Arabian Knights was supposedly taken.

Chief among these was a small girl by the name Arietta, who, aside from being extremely disrespectful to her fellow employees, was capable of fending off a replicantis by herself, of course with the help of her fuzzy (note for later), friendly giant liger, with its lightning breath and steel-rending claws, and her far less friendly, bald pet canary, which was only dangerous in that it was freakishly, head-explodingly annoying.

Anyway, in the chaos caused by the greed of the fish packing people, Arietta's parents decided the heck with it all and moved to Grand Chokmah, where they discovered the secret to the creation of the PERFECT glazed donut, which they promptly sold and became quadrillionaires for the remainder of their lives. Unfortunately for Arietta, she was never informed of this decision, and when she stumbled across the corpses of both her mother's and father's identical twins, she fell into despair and a small, randomly placed vat of hot chocolate, which spilled onto some nitroglycerin Arietta happened to standing on. However, her fate of needing to be alive in the plot saved her, and the blast merely launched her to the cheagle woods, where she found a liger similarly gigantic to her friend. Bleeding, bruised, shocked, and confused, she decided the heck with society and began to regard her newly christened mother with adoration. She never forgot those first words her mother spoke to her: "ROFL, that is one random noob".

Before that, there was a desert mercenary, whose life had been spent learning the dangers of the desert and aiding merchant caravans across the bleak expanse he called his home and, more recently, enjoying his rest time in Baticul with his beautiful wife. His name was not Badaq. Nope, Badaq was a sewer maintenance man who had had the miraculous luck of wedding one of the king's attendants, a maid named Sylvia, who physically had an eerie resemblance to madam Fabre, but had an extreme cat fetish that set the two apart. Her house was filled with them. You couldn't walk, but if you shuffled you could avoid stepping on too many of them at once.

The pair had just adopted their first child, a baby girl named Malshoristheresamycassandrachael, or just "Meryl" for short. Badaq had just left for a hard days work when Sylvia decided the heck with having this little blonde, cat-loving, constantly crying, poop-making load of extra work around, and chucked her out an open window. After a quick orbit of the planet, the child landed in a bed next to the king and queen's little girl, Nataliamberebeccajasminellenicole, a quiet little thing that had been so quiet to this point that most people thought she was dead. Now Meryl was unbelievably annoyed at this and, being a baby, cried. This came as such a jolt the entire castle that the quiet little angel the next bed was wholly ignored as the royal family rushed to the room to see the newly invigorated child. Unfortunately, the queen was overwhelmed with happiness at this, and died of a sudden, massive, joy-induced heart attack. But most of the castle didn't care. There was finally a successor!

On the other end of it all, however, Sylvia was beginning to worry. When her husband found out, it would make an embarrassing scene, which she desired to avoid at all costs. And so she quickly built one of Baticul's most famous tourist attractions, Auldrant's largest bathtub, and jumped down the drain, hoping to go missing for a while and make Badaq worry more about her than about the conspicuously missing baby. Unfortunately, she went down the tube her husband was fixing, which had been redirected to the harbor for a short time while it was fixed. However, Sylvia had been in a class of her own for all her elementary swimming lessons, and swiftly and expertly drowned. Hey, did I say it was a higher class?

Badaq, unaware of any of these circumstances, and seeing only the feline horde of his home, began searching frantically for his lost daughter and wife. Eventually finding no evidence of any change, save for a humungous bathtub in the kitchen, and the mental stress having worn his psyche down to a minute nub, Badaq decided that the only remaining, logical answer was that his wife and daughter had been turned into cats, and so began his slow decent into catness.

And as for the queen's REAL little girl, she was found and raised by the beautiful, loving wife of a desert mercenary, and had nothing to do with the plot ever again.

As the Fon Master lay dying, there were whispers and rumors that there was no successor, that the Order of Lorelei would fall into chaos and confusion and telemarketing to find any form of funds. Fortunately, the public was, as usual, wrong. Except about the telemarketing thing. It's hard being a nonprofit religious organization.

In Ortion Cavern, the seven newborns, each the size of a small man, stood shoulder to shoulder, only two sufficiently aware to understand that only one of them could walk away alive, the Fon Master. Mystearica Grants strode up and down the row fighting herself in her head. _But that haircut they have is _so cute_!!! No, no, I must pick the one with the closest powers to Ion, or it will be noticed that that one has the most adorable smile… _slap _Snap out of it Tear! You can do this. Okay, this one looks the most confident, but let's try them all. _Tear decided she'd try something unexpected to see how they would handle this one. So she shouted, "Ion replicas! What is your profession?" This created a general atmosphere of "huh?" except with the confident one and the one with his hair and robe billowing epicly in an ethereal wind.

From the windy replica came, "To be freakishly emo, mope about it remorselessly, try to kill any main characters I come across, and always _always ALWAYS_keep my hair blowing like this." As the last was said he flipped his awesome, floating hair.

From the confident clone came the cry, "To replace Ion as the supreme leader of the Order of Lorelei and kill all who oppose me or anything that is fuzzy!"

Well, while put off by the comment about fuzzy things, Tear had to admit, the power she felt coming from the confident Ion was far closer to the power of the original Fon Master than any of the others. "You," she said, pointing to him, "follow me. The rest of you, stay here. My brother will be along shortly to speak with you." And so the current Fon Master came to power upon the death of the true Ion. But that's not what this chapter's about, now is it?

As Van entered the cave, jingling the allowance Luke had given him in his pocket, he noticed two things. First, five of these fools were totally bland, and therefore brought to a swift end. However, the next thing he had noticed was that the one non-bland Ion had STINKING AWESOME HAIR!!! AND his robe billowed with it! "Hey, you, Ion replica I am arbitrarily deciding to name Sync, will you join my order of powerful fighters and help me overthrow something called the score, which mostly talks about Yulia going on a lunch break?"

After carefully considering his odds of killing Van, escaping, and finding meaning, he decided the heck with finding meaning. Sounded like too much work anyway. "Sure, I'll join your little battle club." he replied. "First, though, I-"

"Great!" interrupted Van. "Now that you're in, you are hereby ordered to tell me about that awesome breeze you have going there."

"Hey you noticed?! You're the first person ever to notice that. That's my only… err, one of my many super awesome powers as a replica of the Fon Master. I can't tell you any more, since it would cut into my time being emo. You know how that goes." _Oh well, _Sync thought,_as long as they don't call me something demeaning like "the breezy" I suppose I can stand this. Dang though, I hope I get a cool name like "the tempest" or something._

Next, Asch's story, since I can condense it. A 10-year old noble with a clown wig and a reputation as Kimlasca's star water boy in the game of football was kidnapped and replicated, but the inane drivel Dist was muttering drove him to the creation of a language that A. made Dist feel included, and B. kept everyone off of his back and out of his way. That's pretty much it. Yup. Mmmmhmm. Most definitely. Undoubtedly.

It all began simply enough: with a breakthrough restaurant. Amazingly, it had come about by the dedication of two young boys, by the names of Jade Balfour and Saphir Whateverhislastnamewas. They alone had mastered the recipe and begun this phenomenon, the at first unknown Keterburg Fried Chicken restaurant, or KFC, or Colonel Curtiss' in the years after one of its founders had joined the military. Unfortunately, as a chain began to develop, the boys began to see a major decline in their pocket change. They had built a fon machine to mass produce their most common orders, but it was just the size for one restaurant production, and making so many more of these had sucked their wallets dry of gald.

Finally, pressed for cash or really anything to keep it going, Jade found a way to fonically replicate the foods they previously had to rely on the machines for, and so proposed the principles of fomicry. This made Dist feel extremely useless once he had completed the machine to do this on a massive scale, and quit the business about 15 minutes after he finished. But, after brooding for about 20 seconds, he decided he'd give it one more go.

Slowly, a routine developed. The boys would get up at 10:00 every morning, and go prep their masterpiece establishment for the lunch rush. And every day, during that lunch rush, their favorite customer would come and order a chicken sandwich and some light ranch dressing. They argued, and several times even fought, over who would get to serve the meal to professor Gelda Nebilim. She was an ex-member of the Oracle Fishpacking corp., and so Saphir admired her intelligence and skill in her field. She was also a seventh fonist, which gave Jade a reason to look up to her.

One day, in an attempt to outdo Saphir, Jade decided he would make the Professor's meal personally out of non-replicated meat. What's more, he would make it using artes combining the seventh and fifth fonons. And he seemed to succeed. But, as she finished the meal, Nebilim seemed bloated somehow, and her face was very red. Worried, Jade and Saphir followed her a short distance, after which she collapsed in the snow. "Jade, can't you save her?" Saphir whined.

"Of _course_ I can. Didn't you know I'm a _real master _of the seventh fonon?" came the serious, sarcastic reply. "There's no time. However, if I start now I can make an incredibly hard boss fight for anyone foolish enough to try to fight her on very hard or unknown difficulty settings."

"Okay, sweet! Do it Jade, or I'll never forgive you!" Jade, of course, obliged, or at least attempted to. The actual product was clueless, mindlessly violent, but overall not very impressive seeming. "Jade," continued Saphir, "I have to leave the company. I need to find some good replica data on Gelda to make a way better boss fight than that weakling you just churned out."

"Huh? You're still here?' Jade seemed surprised.

And so begins the tale of Dist the Figment.

Hahaha I'm writing in subscript!!!!

**SPOILER WARNING**

**If you have never earned Tear's training outfit, this next section is sufficiently close to what actually happened to spoil that quest's ending for you.**

It was devastating. She had never imagined that… that… freak would sink this low. And so she had picked up her weapons, her fontech pistols, sneaked up behind him and, in a rain of bullets and a storm of twitching brought on by too much texting over the years, managed to perforate every structure in Yulia city, and yet completely missed Van. "What the heck was that?!" shouted Van as he turned around, surprised. "That was clearly the worst possible aim on all of Auldrant! My arthritic grandmother could shoot straighter than that!"

"So what?" shot back Giselle, bitter and infuriated. "You changed my brother! He went to you to ask how to solve the problem, and you went and destroyed him and furthered it! He trusted you, and so did I! You are not even worthy enough to know the depth of how much I hate your fool face right now!"

"Giselle…"

"No!" Giselle Oslo screamed as she sank to her knees, never quavering in her aim. "You'll just lie! And you'll do it again and again until you've finally destroyed the one reason I have left to really believe in this psychotic world." Her aim dropped, but her eyes still held a dark, fiery promise. "I know all about your facial hair, Vandesdelca. I know your eyebrows fire hypno rays! I know your beard is what truly gives you power! Know that I will avenge my brother, and his belief shall rise with me…" The blaze left, and she was but a shell at his feet as he gently spoke to her.

"Giselle, it's just a phone."

"It's not!" she wept, "It's a Helio. A Helio, dang it, A HELIO!!!"

"If that's how you feel, than you are a pathetic waste of life, but since your weaponry is so unique and cool, I'll invite you to be my right hand. You can get close, and kill me if I drop my guard."

Legretta whimpered her acceptance to the chorus of Van's laughter. Little did she know how relieved he was. _Phew, _he thought, _this chappy is finally over. I wonder if I can get my allowance now…_

"No. You already got it once this chapter."

"Aww, come on, Luke, PLEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSEEEEEEEE?"

"Fine, fine. Geez, shut up already."

"By the way, nice clown wig sir"

"Thank y- NOT AGAIN!!!!!!!"

**Yay! It's over! That was my personal favorite chapter yet, since I've been planning it for like two weeks. Thanks for sticking with this, people who are still reading this.**


	12. Another Chap hic Chap hic Thingy

**Disclaimer: I've put this in enough times to get the message across. I own my brain, and thus some of the ideas in here. Nothing else.**

**Another Chap hic Chaphic Thingy**

Everyone except Ion was getting bored and worried at the same time. Their levels hadn't risen for a long time, since all they found to fight were some weird little crab things that weren't fuzzy, so Ion was having a blast at them, meaning no one else was getting any experience points, whereas Ion, thanks to a 10 times exp bonus, was already level 42, and not shy about rubbing the rest of the group's faces in it. Neither was he, apparently, ashamed of running all the way to Grand Chokmah when the party encountered one of those weird pig/rhino monsters from Tataroo valley.

"Yeah, but let's see how _you'd_ do against it, huh?! You're IQs are so low it could probably have stunned you with its comparative genius… assuming I didn't gut you first for not _shutting up with that snickering!!!!!"_

Okay, so maybe he was sort of annoyed. Everyone had learned to live with it, and Tear had even started to enjoy it. _Well,_ she thought,_ if he eventually gets _too _annoyed at everything, maybe he'll volunteer to blow it all up when I'm done making a new world. And maybe, just maybe, Mieu will join me and I can do his hair up with bows and make him so much even more unbelievably cuterest than he……… no, no, no! That is NOT how the bad person _(Political correctness: who cares?) _is supposed to act! I should be plotting Luke's ultimate destruction, preferably occurring before the scene where I have to say I love him. As she thought this, she nearly barfed into her brain. _

"Tear, your ear is leaking bile. Could you put a napkin to it or something?" Jade's typically Jade-like remark caught her off guard, and made her wonder just how he pulled off the mind reading thing so casually. It also made her put her hand to her ear, just long enough to realize that it wasn't wet, and just long enough for Jade to be able to get off that somehow eerie laugh of his.

"It's really quite simple," he started again, but was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Asch, appearing out of nowhere to slap Luke, who had been humming the Meaning of Birth song from the sound test. Asch promptly slapped Luke with a cry of, "Shut up, dreck!" He then promptly vanished back to wherever he had teleported in from. Most nobody noticed this little random blip in reality, save for Luke, because he was not used to being slapped by random, fishy dressed, teleporting identical twins of himself.

"Okay, what the heck just happened?!" he started yelling. "Why was Asch here, why'd he slap me for humming ToA music, and why am I wearing a stupid clown wig?" A moment of tortured silence came, followed by a nearly inaudible moan of, "Not again."

As they finally approached the crossing, the air began to smell somewhat funny. No one could quite place the smell, except of course for Jade, who wasn't telling. Mieu tried to sing "Home on the Rugnican Plains", and nearly caused a major earthquake. He had only managed to destroy most of Radessia before Luke shut him up and hyperresoanced the continent back together.

When everyone finally came to the river, everyone (minus Jade) was shocked. The entire river was flowing a bloody crimson. "Wha-what is this? Why's the river all bloody?" Luke stammered, and then sniffed the air, "And why the heck does it smell all fruity?"

Guy sighed. "Luke, I can't believe you didn't even try to remember your geography. This is the Foobar River. It's constantly flowing fruit juice, and no one has the slightest idea why. The only problem is that the juice has a lot of time in the river, and it ferments, and somewhere along the line it gets amplified, and so everyone who drinks it or even touches it gets instantly drunk. I can't believe you forgot this, especially since this is the only time in the game you're here, and just after this we meet back up with Anise and Van and we go to Choral Castle and you get your fon slots opened to Asch, and so he gets to communicate with you and even control you whenever he wants, and…" Guy's latest monologue was interrupted by an intensely "accidental" shove from Mieu, which sent him skipping face-first across the river, caromed him off Grand Chokmah's walls, and brought him back to them in exactly his same position.

Guy, contrary to the popular belief that people probably wouldn't like being skipped around Auldrant by a cheagle, was wearing a bemused, lopsided smile like a medal of honor. "Whee, that wasch fun! Let's go again mommy, and this time hold the mayonnaise or I'll TAKE those ballet classes."

To the silent tone of everyone's utter discomfort towards Guy's… odd self, and the much louder tone of his random, pathetic ramblings, the group carefully walked and fought only on the stepping stones along the river, eager to avoid a similar look to Guy's. As they came to the river's halfway point, Guy seemed deep in thought. Thinking maybe this was a sign that his friend was coming out of his river induced stupidity, Luke spoke up.

"Hey Guy, you feeling okay now? That whole thing with the river water is pretty weird, isn't it?" However, Guy wasn't listening. Instead, he was looking at Tear.

"Hey Tear," he said, the slurring from earlier long since gone. "I was wondering, when we reach Baticul, will you go out with me?"

"What?"

No one, Jade included for once, had seen that one coming. And just as many people thought he had A. half a chance or B. half a brain left in that skull. Tear was especially surprised, and was having a rather difficult time finding a way to express her love for Guy. His eerily attractive golden hair spikes, his straightforwardness, and his being the only male survivor of Hod who wasn't related to her, not to mention his awesome bartender outfit, made him incredibly cute to her, and thus totally irresistible.

"Umm, sure, I guess. Where were you thinking?"

She wasn't even sure why she said it, and Jade was going to need some serious soap to get all the dirt out of dragging jaw. Ion, on the other hand, was a bit more coherent. "How about the coliseum? It's the only interesting thing in Baticul. Besides, all the pain and near death give you some real moments of concern for each other."

I'm not sure whether or not anything stranger than this conversation will come anytime soon, so I hope you enjoy it. Luke wasn't. Having read ahead quite a ways in the script, he was feeling very anxious that he might lose his romantic connection, a necessary part of his slightly cough angsty main character role. Also, he too was going to want some of whatever soap Jade was using. Guy was never _this_ straightforward, Tear wasn't _this _nice to Guy, and Ion had some level of relationship experience. _Oh well,_ he figured,_ I guess I'll just have to wait till the next chapter or two to figure this one out. I'm written to be slow like that._

Arietta was seriously annoyed. That whole stupid party had walked right by her, despite her yelling, screaming, and insults to them and their ancestors. _Dang little newts. Oh well, next time I get to thrash them on top of a castle. And then they'll have to listen to my little "jokes" about their lives. Hurry, chapter 13, hurry._

**Okay, yeah, it's been a while since I posted a new chapter. Amazing what reality does to your plans, isn't it? Anyway, I'll try to speed the next one up a little, I promise.**


	13. Frustrating

Disclaimer: If I owned ToA I would probably have something else to do right now

**Disclaimer: A disclaimer. OH MY GOSH A DISCLAIMER!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!! (Namco owns the game, not me :)**

**Frustrating**

And so began the long, lonely trek through the maybe 20 second run to Kaitzur, filled with much woe and betrayal, but also a grand hero, fighting through all to become the shining leader his people needed. Unfortunately, since I'm cheap, you will never know about him, except that he was unknowingly stepped on and killed by Luke, who was about halfway to Kaitzur at the time Arietta flew over him on Hraesvelger and nailed him in the back of the back of his head with a jar of smoked salmon. This caused a terrible rift in the universe, instantly placing the entire group in the Kaitzur checkpoint, where Asch, with a war cry of "SHUT UP, DRECK!?" fell from the sky at Luke, who caught the blow, parried it, punched Asch in the face, played a quick game of ping pong with Anise, then smashed Asch into the next chapter.

Van suddenly spoke up from behind them. "Wow Luke that was great I've never before in my life seen such a highly skilled parry against an essentially random foe dropping from the sky oh and by the way now that I've buttered you up a bit can I have an advance on my allowance?"

Luke only needed to hear the last part. "No way, Van, you already got your allowance for the month. Besides, you have to train me to earn the allowance, and you've had time off ever since I got kidnapped, so if anything YOU should be paying ME for all the days you've been getting off!"

Van's face melted. Or at least, it looked like it did through all the tears pouring out of his eyes as he screamed, "I WANT MY ALLOWANCE, I WANT MY ALLOWAAAaaance…" By the time Van went over to the toddler tantrum of beating his hands and legs on the ground, Luke was wholly, sincerely annoyed to the point of asking Ion to give Van whatever Ion thought would be a good allowance. So he did.

Ion puzzled for a moment before deciding. "I think," he said with a fatherly smile, "that a proper allowance in this case would be an all expenses paid, 3 week trip to the Keterburg Megalofredrica spa and resort."

"…………WHAT!?" came from every corner of Auldrant and the author, but not Jade, as Ion was not known for his charity, save in the form of _realistic _sword lessons. Ion just looked happy. Van was ecstatic.

"Thank you, fonmaster. Now, here are your passports. You can head through the border now. See you at the port!" And Van walked off, just like that, with about 700,839 gald to fund his evil schemes as dictated by Tear.

And so the party approached the border. As they came nearer, though, they noticed a line had formed. "What the heck?" Luke wondered, "Isn't there supposed to NEVER be a line in this place when we come through?" A surly man in a white suit heard this, and so came over to the Luke, insulted his hair, and began explaining what they would have to do to cross the border. "First," the man said, "you will need to take off all your baggage, armor, and weapons, and put them through our fonic screening thingy. You can have as many gels as you like in your bag, but only if they are in little containers, each of these within a little zippy bag. This is because there is no way anyone would ever think to put a lot of something dangerous, like poison or explosives, into lots of little bottles. Then, you must take off your shoes, so that they can go through the thingy as well. You may then walk over the border, but only through our special evil intention detector. Your bags and shoes may be subject to search and seizure by our personnel. But of course it's only for security reasons. It's DEFINITELY NOT because we just really like your shoes and weapons that happen to be our size and style."

"Nice monologue, bozo. And don't you DARE insult my awesome clown w…" Luke felt his hair, groaned, and simply went through.

Things went well for Guy and Anise on their ways, but when things came to Tear, there were some difficulties. The evil intention detector kept going off as she tried to pass through. "Ugh, can't you just let me through? Please?" she asked the officers.

"Sorry, ma'am, but we can't let you through unless we're sure you won't do anything crazy and evil. Are you sure you don't have something bottled up? Any grudges against discriminating people? World annihilation plans? Soul-consuming greed?"

Tear, ignoring this blather, focused on Guy, and giddily ran through to glomp him.

As Jade crossed the evil intention detector, an officer noticed that his left pocket had a much larger bulge than his right. "Excuse me, sir, but you seem to have something in your pocket there. I'm going to have to ask you to declare it and stow it in your bags."

"Oh, this?" Jade asked, pulling out a small plastic tub. "It's just some cream cheese. Surely the welfare of Kimlasca is not so precarious as to be troubled by my breakfast toppings."

"I'm sorry, sir, but you simply can't take that through. It's not exactly a gel. And anyway, it's not in a tiny little bottle, so for all we know you're carrying an army of terrorists in that tub. We are confiscating it."

"Oh, _truly _I have been saved from delivering such a _danger_ to Kimlasca as breakfast foods! Swiftly, take this _horror_ from me!" The officer, with a look that would have severely maimed, swiped the cream cheese and, as Jade passed through, pulled out his bagel. Meanwhile, Jade was examining the object from his other pocket, thinking to himself "_It's amazing how much the KSA misses. If I actually used this little surprise, I could blow half of Baticul into the fon belt."_

As the party reached the port they heard a by now familiar voice yelling at everyone. "HAHAHA, you rappig babies, you think you can stop me? Have a nice look at this face while it tells you exactly what it thinks. Or it would if you had half the required brain to understand it! You're wits are all so dim I'd need all of them just to outshine a black hole!"

Anise figured Arietta had finally gone too far. She needed a correction. "Umm, I hate to burst your little delusion session, Gloomietta, but here on Auldrant people don't know that there is such thing as a black hole, except maybe the spot where Hod was."

Arietta, for her part, was genuinely shocked. "What!? You mean these morons are so ignorant they never even heard of black holes in space!? Amazing!" Arietta turned back to the workers. "You are even lower than I thought. You are so low, ticks use tweezers to get _you _off of_ them_! Your minds would be lost in the great expanse of a bee's head! Now, if you'll excuse me…" Arietta grabbed a random worker and flew off on a big blue bird. "Oh, and by the way, come to Choral Castle, fools, so that we can beat your earwax out your nose."

As Arietta flew off, Guy was left wondering. "_What does she mean she'll beat us all up? She only wastes Luke, and that's mostly because he's stupid. Maybe it has something to do with how three of the Cod Generals are waiting for us to open Luke's fon slots to Asch? Or maybe it's because this is the end of the chapter?"_

**I'm slow. I know. But it's about to start picking up speed again: I just got back from a month of vacation. Please, don't completely lose faith! This fic isn't dead yet!**


End file.
